Canberra couple Eddie Casey and Dale Freestone were well aware of Mr Fluffy asbestos when it came time for them to buy a home in August.

That’s why they hired a licensed asbestos assessor from Canberra to fully check the small Bungendore cottage in which they wanted to raise their two children.

When the report came back, all clear for signs of Mr Fluffy’s distinctive loose amosite asbestos, the sale proceeded and the couple crossed the NSW border from their rented Garran home to start enjoying country life with Leon, 3, Grace, 1.

That’s why a letter last month from WorkCover NSW informing them their new cottage contained Mr Fluffy came as an almighty shock.

“I thought it was a mistake in the paperwork,” said Eddie, a 25-year-old landscape architecture student at the University of Canberra.

He asked the Palerang Council to check its records and hired another A-class licensed asbestos assessor from Canberra, Robson Environmental, to urgently test the house.

Devastatingly for the family, council records confirmed that the home had tested positive for Mr Fluffy during a voluntary dust sampling program conducted by the Queanbeyan City Council in 1999.

The Robson report further confirmed amosite in the hallway and master bedroom and in visible patches stuck to the timber joists under a second layer of non-asbestos insulation in the ceiling.

Mr Casey and Ms Freestone are now receiving legal advice.

The couple have found another rental home in Bungendore and are moving out of their cottage.

They are also facing financial ruin, having scraped together the money for the deposit on their home. Now they face rent and all associated costs while paying back a mortgage on a house in which they can no longer live.

The family have decided to come out publicly to illustrate the complete lack of a safety net for Mr Fluffy-affected homes in NSW. They note that if they had bought a similar home back in Canberra, they would be entitled to immediate financial help worth $14,000 and be offered a buyback of their property – almost certainly at the price they paid.

John Barilaro, the NSW Nationals member for Monaro and a member of the NSW Joint Select Committee on Loose Fill Asbestos, said this family’s case was a “worst nightmare” of NSW Mr Fluffy discoveries.

But Mr Barilaro expressed confidence that the NSW Government was poised to financially help affected families consistent with the aid rolled out by the ACT government – $10,000 for each family and $2000 per dependent child.

Given the urgency of the Mr Fluffy crisis, the committee was also bringing forward its reporting date from February to just before Christmas.

Mr Casey said: “Although we have a very uncertain new year ahead of us, it is important the NSW government provide us with the same immediate financial assistance as ACT Fluffy residents, as it would go some way to helping us regather ourselves and look forward to Christmas as a family.

“Long term, we want the NSW Government to announce the same outcome as ACT residents, for the buy-back and demolition of all Fluffy-affected houses.”

It is still unclear how many homes are affected by Mr Fluffy across NSW, apart from the 11 homes confirmed in Queanbeyan, one in Yass and one in Bungendore. NSW WorkCover is continuing to offer free assessments to suspect homes.

A public health expert has downplayed fears that work on telecommunication pits could lead to harmful asbestos exposure among nearby residents.

Several sites in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia have been shut down because asbestos was disturbed during excavation works for the roll out of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Authorities are investigating safety breaches and some concerned residents in the Sydney suburb of Penrith evacuated their homes.

But Professor Bruce Armstrong, who has been researching asbestos-related diseases for decades, says there is next to no danger for residents near the affected sites.

He says asbestos fibres are less dangerous when they are bound up in concrete sheeting.

“Provided it remains bound in the asbestos cement form, then the risk from it is negligible,” he said.

“The hazard…

would have been to the workers knocking the asbestos around and not to people living nearby.”

Professor Armstrong says the public lacks education about the dangers of asbestos.

“We’ve seen the difficulties that many men have experienced – Bernie Banton and others – and I think the community has not either been educated to or perhaps caught the difference between the circumstances in which those men were exposed and the circumstances around asbestos cement sheeting,” he said.

“I think that people are starting to attach to being even close to asbestos cement sheeting the same kind of hazard as men experienced in Hardie…

Television home renovation shows have fuelled a do-it-yourself craze that campaigners fear will lead to the next wave of asbestos victims – many of whom will be women.

The president of the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia, Barry Robson, says shows like The Block, The Renovators and Better Homes and Gardens have been embraced by women who have taken up DIY renovation with a gusto.

But in the process, many have unwittingly become exposed to potentially deadly, mesothelioma-causing asbestos fibres present in just about all homes built before 1987.

“Unfortunately we’re heading for a third wave of victims and their families because home renovation is getting so big,” Mr Robson told AAP at the launch of a nationwide awareness campaign on Sunday.

“An unfortunate by product of this is the increase in the number of women now presenting with meso.”

Cases of mesothelioma in this group are expected to spike over the next 40 years, he said.

Renovation shows had a moral obligation to include “substantial warnings”, Mr Robson said.

“They have not only fuelled (the DIY craze) but where they’ve let down the public is not having warnings,” he said.

Mesothelioma has previously been associated with asbestos miners, manufacturers or tradespeople, but the new campaign aims to focus on the dangers of home renovations by informing people where asbestos can be found in their houses.

As part of the campaign, organisers have created a portable replica home which will embark on a nationwide tour, demonstrating where asbestos can be found.

Australia has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related diseases in the world and has been ranked among the top consumers of asbestos cement products per capita, the Asbestos Diseases Research Institute says.

The institute on Monday night is to hold a candlelight vigil for the victims of asbestos, with the sails of the Sydney Opera House to be illuminated blue.

WorkCover operations director Peter Dunphy said it was important to provide home renovators with information.

“Looking at exposure to asbestos we’re looking at the people who are most likely to have the potential to be exposed to asbestos now, and that would be tradespeople and people who are doing home renovations.”

Mr Dunphy said WorkCover was working closely with renovation shows to provide more information about asbestos.